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Document
Type: Journal Article
Publication Date: 2016
For most of human history, fire has been a pervasive presence in human life, and so also in human thought. This essay examines the ways in which fire has functioned intellectually in Western civilization as mythology, as religion, as natural philosophy and as modern science. The great phase change occurred with the development of industrial combustion; fire faded from quotidian life, which also removed it from the world of informing ideas. Beginning with the discovery of oxygen, fire as an organizing concept fragmented into various subdisciplines of natural science and forestry. The Anthropocene, however, may revive the intellectual role of fire as an informing idea or at least a narrative conceit.
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Citation: Pyne, Stephen J. 2016. Fire in the mind: changing understandings of fire in western civilization. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 371(1696):20150166.
Cataloging Information
Topics:
Keywords:
- fire management
- fire use
- histories
Tall Timbers Record Number: 32815 • Location Status: Not in file • Call Number: Available • Abstract Status: Okay, Fair use, Reproduced by permission
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Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 23270
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